The Rise of the Joystick Army

The U.S. Army is planning on mounting joystick-controlled weapon stations on the bulk of its inventory of tactical vehicles, and the defense industry is readying itself for the lucrative contract that will make it happen. The Army's Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, in Warren, Mich., in 2011 is expected to release a request for proposals for tens of thousands of vehicle-mounted weapons platforms called Common Remotely Operated Weapons Station, or CROWS.

Army officials say the numbers are not settled but that the order will be much higher than the roughly 10,000 systems currently in the field. Industry players say the total contract could be worth $4 billion. "The Army is now doing the analysis of what other vehicles will get these, and in what numbers," says Rich Audette, deputy project manager for soldier weapons at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., who has worked with CROWS since its inception in the 1990s. "We assume it will not be on every tactical vehicle, but it will be a substantial number."

The essence of CROWS is to keep gunners buttoned up inside Humvees and larger armored vehicles, but still allow them to shoot with accuracy. The gun crews use a video targeting system and joystick to slew a weapon, including machine guns or missiles, mounted outside.

As new vehicles are added to the Army's inventory, like the new M-ATV and the in-development Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, CROWS will be integrated into a certain number of them. Finding that number is the focus of the Army's current effort. Operations staff and the number crunchers must decide how many, and how quickly, remote-control weapons will be mounted on its vehicles.

With a massive expansion of the CROWS stations in the works, industry executives are positioning themselves to get a slice of the multibillion dollar contract. Northrop Grumman and EOS Technologies announced this week that they are teaming up to vie for the sales contest. EOS has been waiting for this market rematch for some time. The company supplied about 500 CROWS to the Army, but in 2007, it lost a billion dollar follow-on contract to Norway's Kongsberg group to supply thousands of an improved system, called CROWS 2, to troops.

Up-armored Humvees were the first to receive CROWS, but requests from field commanders for remote-control weapons on MRAPs and Abrams tanks followed. The Norwegians, as their orders surged to meet the Army's increasing demand, set up a CROWS production facility in Johnstown, Pa. The deal (which is structured to release extra orders only if needed, and after the company's products and facilities pass acceptance tests) seems to be going smoothly—last month the Army ordered $266 million worth of extra CROWS 2 stations from Kongsberg. "We've used up all the space on the current contract," Audette says.

Industry machinations will continue. Kongsberg teamed with another of their foes, BAE Systems, to fulfill the contract. One wonders if BAE will go it alone or preserve the relationship. Another company with real-world experience fielding remote-control systems is the Israeli firm Rafale. There is also the chance that the CROWS 3 Army order will overwhelm any single firm. That could mean more cases of foes becoming partners. "We could have multiple awards on this one," Audette says.

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